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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24127522">Like A Drunken Catholic on Easter</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Elementle/pseuds/Mr_Elementle'>Mr_Elementle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rick and Morty</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adult Morty Smith, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, not explicit though</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:22:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,631</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24127522</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Elementle/pseuds/Mr_Elementle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The day that Rick Sanchez died was Mortimer Smiths least favourite holiday, but every year he would attend to it's traditions dutifully like a drunken catholic at Easter mass.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Like A Drunken Catholic on Easter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>He felt the hands wrap around his neck, the bloated distorted face screaming at him “Why'd you do it Morty? Why's you do it!”.</em>
  </p>
</div><p>     They happened every year on this day. Nightmares, that's all they were, at least that's what he told himself. Somewhere deep inside him it almost felt like they were real. But that would be ridiculous, with all he had been through it made sense he had nightmares.<br/>
Mortimer Smith sat in the dimly lit living room, in one hand he held a tumbler full of regret and whiskey, in the other he held a remote control, fast forwarding through home videos, stopping occasionally to watch a minute or two. The videos were nothing special, some were as new as his daughter's sweet 16, and others as old as his first day of school. One in particular caught his attention though, it was that one he was rewinding and watching over and over again. It was the first time he had  meet grandpa Rick. God how he hated that bastard, how he rued every day he spent with that horrible man. Mortimer was never really sure when it happened, when he went from adoring his grandfather, to despising him. His best guess was that there wasn't and one moment, or epiphany, it just sort of happened over time. Every “Adventure” chipping away at him more and more until he couldn't take anymore.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>He could see the portal open, on the other side was hell, and he couldn't stop it, he never could stop it, all he could do was go along for the ride and hope he didn’t die.</em>
  </p>
</div><p>     He was 17 when it happened, it seemed like so long ago, but everything seemed like so long ago now, with enough dedication and whiskey Mortimer Smith could make tonight seem like so long ago. That day wasn’t special, Mortimer thought, It could have been any day, it could have been any single miserable fucking day after the accident. Maybe that was it, maybe that was the “Epiphany”. The accident, the end of the citadel, the end of infinite Rick’s and Infinite Morty’s. Maybe something about being the last Morty, about being the ONLY Morty made him feel special, maybe it did make him special. He didn’t mean to do anything special that particular day, Morty Smith, never meant to do anything special Any Day, Mortimer thought to himself. But that day, he killed himself, and Rick, and every other himself and every other Rick. Rick… His Rick… The Rick he lived with… The bastard that sired his mom and then fucked up his life, yeah that one works he thought, The bastard that sired his mom and then fucked up his life said the blue holes atomic phaseshifting meant that none of the revival pods or cloning chambers or whatever the fuck the other ricks had would detect their rick as dead, their atoms were still alive as far as they were concerned and always would be. The bastard that sired his mom and then fucked up his life didn’t say anything about the Mortys on the citadel, but he didn’t have to, this Morty, the only Morty now, Morty thought, knew that none of those Ricks built clone tubes or fucking dna salad spinners for their Morty. So there they were, Rick and Morty, the Rick and Morty capital T-H-E capital R Rick and morty. Mortimer remembered that so specifically, The bastard couldn’t even give his name a fucking capital while gloating about the genocide Mortimer had committed. Maybe that’s why I started hating the name morty, Mortimer thought as he refilled his tumbler and skipped to the next video. This one of Summer’s late-blooming horse girl phase, after she helped mom save some horse during impromptu field surgery and the owner offered to teach her to ride. She still had that horse, she had all of those horses now, the owner left his whole damn ranch to summer in his will after some bullshit end of life bonding right out of a trashy teen movie about the importance of the elderly.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>Blood, so much blood, all over his hands, all in his mouth and hair, he didn’t want there to be so much blood but he didn’t want to stop, the blood felt like a trophy, like proof it was working</em>
  </p>
</div><p>     All my elderly patron left me with was PTSD Mortimer thought bitterly. He supposed it would be too easy to just be mad at Summer, she had a dream dropped in her lap, and then had everything to fulfill that dream poured on top, I mean how can you even be bitter about that, it’s like the ending you write when you just want to end the series early, but killing of the main character seems to mean, so you just decide “oh they always wanted to raise horses and then a kindly old horse owner gave them some horses and a bunch of money to raise those horses”, it’s like is Sherlock Holmes instead of falling off of that waterfall just left to be a beekeeper in Alberta, Canada. So no Mortimer wasn’t bitter at his sister, why should he be? Every Smith seemed to have their life dropped in their lap, His mother got into Veterinary school on a full scholarship after applying on a whim, his father fucked his way into not having to take care of himself, and summer had horses bequeathed upon her like she pleased some pagan horse goddess. Mortimer couldn’t be bitter about that since he had plenty of dreams, and goals, and chances dropped in his lap too, being a singer, writing movies for netflix, but unlike Summer, Mortimer Smith had someone there slapping every dish served to him on a silver platter onto the floor, The world could have handed Mortimer Smith the keys to heaven itself and Rick would have melted them down. Every time he had a night like this, one filled with nightmares and memories, he remembered every opportunity knocked out, every fire of passion suffocated, every lake of interest drained by Rick Sanchez, and each piece added up and stacked up, like lego building the Eiffel tower until any guilt he might have felt was dwarfed by the size of his contempt. No matter how guilty, how ashamed Mortimer Smith felt when he woke up from the memory of that night, after a few glasses of dry whiskey and sour memories he felt ready to do it again, to go back and repeat it over and over, He would go from asking himself “How could I do that?”, to “How could I do that but make it last a little longer, make it hurt a little more, make it a little bit messier?”.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>The mess afterward was what surprised Morty, it was never like this on tv, it was never like this any other time, normally people just… blew up, or disintegrated due to some weird sci-fi gadget, but a wrench wasn’t a sci-fi gadget, it was a hunk of shaped metal used for science, but by itself it was barely above a rock in terms of weaponry</em>
  </p>
</div><p>     Mortimer didn’t know if he’d killed 2 people that day, or 2 million people, he knew it wasn’t 0. He had thought the atom bullshit maybe meant they were still technically alive but Bastard corrected him instantly about how they were dead as dead as dead as dead and it was his fault they were dead because he killed them and they died from being dead Morty you stupid little murdering fuck you fucking killed them you fucking killed yourself over and over you stupid fuck do you hate yourself that much that you want to kill yourself but you’re such a fucking pussy that you have to kill another yourself over and over did you want to be the winner you stupid little cunt.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>He had done this before, it shouldn’t be different now, C’mon Morty… No he didn’t want to call himself that he wasn’t a Morty anymore, there were no more Mortys. If there were no more Ricks there shouldn’t be anymore Mortys either. It almost felt good, everything about this felt… good, too good, better than it should Mortimer thought, this was supposed to be horrible, turn your stomach, but everything from the bashing, to the digging, to the dropping felt… Good.<br/>Calling himself Mortimer felt good.</em>
  </p>
</div><p>     The screen cut to the next video, of his father at karaoke belting out No Children by The Mountain Goats, the sharp sudden noise jerked Mortimer back to himself, he realized that it wasn’t Rick’s hands choking him now, it was his own. He let go of his own neck the way you let go of something you weren’t supposed to touch after you got caught touching it. He watched his mother and father on screen, it was their anniversary and they were singing every hate/breakup song they could find in some sort of weird bitter in-joke Morty still didn’t understand but he knew that his parent’s last anniversary before the divorce meant one thing. He was almost at the end of the home movies now, almost to the one he actually wanted to see, but could never bring himself to put on directly, like it was too powerful, and it needed this ritual of drinking and reminiscing to weaken it before watching. </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>Wipe the blood onto your clothes, Wipe the dirt off of your hands, clean up your mistakes till the sink is so fucking filthy you need to throw out the whole kitchen.</em>
  </p>
</div><p>     The videos weren’t in order, well they were in an alphabetical order, just not chronological order, there was probably some way to fix that he thought, make them play based on the date not the title, but then this video, the video, would play too early, it would be back towards summer’s horse girl video, it would be before his daughters birth, it would be before his wedding, it would be before all the good things that came after, and Mortimer felt like he had to see those good things first, all those memories that had titles that started with A-R, and Mortimer was sure that there were some good things in S-Z but on nights like that he normally didn’t make it that far, his trek down memory lane would end around the RIs, the RICK SANCHEZ FUNERAL to be exact, so he wasn’t really sure what came after, maybe there was a really inspiring heartfelt video in the RICK SANCHEZ FUNERAM. Right now we were at the PARENTS LAST ANNIVERSARY, maybe, Mortimer thought, I should figure out some family memories that start with Q, just to drag it out a bit longer. That night no Q videos magically played from the Smith family’s home videos, there was no Quinceñera or Queensland Trip, instead the video of his parents sharing a toast ended. He didn’t want it to end, but the world never really considered what Mortimer Smith wanted. Nobody ever considered what Mortimer Smith wanted, least of all Mortimer Smith, so it’s no surprise that he didn’t turn the tv off, that he didn’t stop the video, that he didn’t stop watching. The screen was a blur of colors and motions, Mortimer was too… drunk? upset? tired? to follow to closely, not that it mattered since he could play out the entire video in his head anyway, right now the black and red blur was his mother crying over a closed casket, the dark blue was summer holding her around the shoulders as their mother wailed, and on the other side in dark green was their father, talking to someone off camera about how they found the body in a shallow grave, how he didn’t know how it happened, how they didn’t have any leads, how how how how how.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>How?<br/>How could they have found him, this isn’t right nobody was supposed to find him.</em>
  </p>
</div><p>     How had nobody known, Mortimer never said a word, never breathed to loud in it’s direction, but still every step, every eye movement, every moment existing felt like an admittance of guilt. Like every single muscle movement at the funeral was a tiny morty jumping off him onto the casket, doing a jig and screaming “LOOK AT ME I’M THE DUMB SON OF A BITCH THAT KILLED RICK SANCHEZ, I FUCKING KILLED HIM AND FUCKED UP BURYING THE BODY AND SOME FUCKING DOG FOUND IT WAHOO LOOK AT ME OVER HERE SO GUILTY”. Sometimes Mortimer was amazed that hadn’t actually happened, that Rick didn’t have some bullshit guilt detector if he got murdered, though to be fair, Mortimer thought, he probably did, it just didn’t have a setting for “killed by a Morty” because that would require Rick admitting that a Morty could kill him. Rick planned for every bounty hunter, assassin, and politician in the universe, but didn’t expect to get taken out by a hunk of metal.</p>
<p>     “Shouldn’t have turned the clone tank off”</p>
<p>     It was the first thing Mortimer had said outloud that night, the sound of his voice almost shocked him, so lost in his thoughts and memories that the vibration of his vocal chords felt like an intruder. They were an intruder, he thought, every part of him was an intruder here, the real Mortimer Smith that belonged here was buried in the backyard of the house he grew up in. Mortimer didn’t like to think about that too much, so for now he settled on just being quiet, it was easier for him to pretend he didn’t exist if he was quiet. Mortimer’s eyes were so blurred to colors and motion that he couldn’t tell if the video, THE video was still playing, or if it had moved on and gone to the wondrous imaginary lands of S-Z, his glass was full of air, and empty of booze which wasn’t ideal in this situation, but the bottle was equally full of nothing. So with a brain full of thoughts, and a glass full of nothing, Mortimer Smith fell sideway on the couch, hiking his legs up to lay out all the way so he didn’t look like some pass out drunk freshman at a frat party, and he settled for second best, that classic cure all humanity had turned to when they ran out of booze, every since they had invented booze; sleep.</p>
<p>     After the blood, after the dirt, after the dog and the funeral and the nights of nightmares and days of anxiety, after unplugging everything in the lab, and then destroying everything in the lab, every night Mortimer saw his face still, choking him, screaming at him, and no matter how much Mortimer destroyed it never got any better, but it never got any worse either. Nights dwindled to weeks, which dripped into months between nightmares, everytime he expected it to be real, to be real this time.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>It never was.</em>
  </p>
</div><p>     It always happened around this time of year, it was like the worst holiday, one that Mortimer always seemed to let slip his mind until it started, but it was still his own personal holiday, Rick Is Actually Dead and No Sci-fi Bullshit Is Gonna Revive the Bastard Day. Like any good holiday it had it’s traditions, such as Drinking until you forget, Watching videos so you remember, Running out of booze and passing out, and his personal favorite, pretending none of it happened the next day when his husband found him passed out on the couch.</p>
<p>     It was Mortimer Smiths least favorite holiday, but like a catholic on easter he attended it dutifully every year, and like a drunken catholic he hated attending it, but loved what it represented.</p>
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